To illustrate my point, I would to look at what I refer to the “third unit” of the Hymn:

For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.” -Col 1:19-20

Reconciliation in the biblical narrative speaks to a fixing that which is undone (undone relationships, undone social systems, etc).  The thing that needs the most “undoing,” of course, is the curse in Genesis.  Whether one takes a literal view of Genesis or not, the main idea of the story seems to be explaining why the world is so undone.  Men rule over women, women have painful childbirths, etc., but if Christ has “reconciled to himself all things” doesn’t this mean the end of the curse?  Obviously, we must take this with a grain of salt as there still is pain and suffering in the world (a common understanding I hear is the reality of the kingdom is an “already, but not yet” paradox).

But if we are to understand, as Christians, the curse is broken, should we not live in such a way?  I think one of the practical ways to live this out is by stopping to define everyone narrowly according to gender roles.  Why does the man have to be the breadwinner?  If the curse is broken, cannot man and wife work alongside one another in peace and harmony?  There will always be problems, but shouldn’t our “post-curse” mentality be focused on the reconciliation of those problems.  Gender should not be a primary means by which we create an “us and them” mentality in the church.

And that’s when I got to thinking…

Why do people believe in the literal “mark of the beast,” not to mention all the other problematic images in Revelation? Is it really because they read scripture and that was the most obvious interpretation (I’ll save questioning their hermeneutics for later)? Is it really only because that’s what’s been passed down to them (I’m sure this is often it!)? Or is it because it makes for very effective scare tactics?

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that dispensationalist literalism makes for very powerful conservative propaganda. I believe that this is part of the reason it is so alive and well in our world. While George W. Bush was in office, dispensationalism was used as propaganda for people to support war in Iraq and to give up on peace making in the middle east. Now that we have Barack Obama in office, it’s the mark of the beast language that scares people into looking negatively upon anything the president does or says. Whatever the situation, dispensationalism is good at twisting current events, no matter how horrific they are or how really good they really may be, and adapting itself so that everything is secret knowledge for the conservative dispensationalist. So the question is, do dispensationalists believe their outlandish interpretations because they’re being honest with the text or is it because it conveniently fits into their conservative bias and fear mongering? Is the literal and future mark of the beast expectation a reasonable interpretation or is it just a convenient scare tactic?

This past Sunday morning our little community of Christ followers prayed that prayer. In some profound way, as I prayed, I felt that I was praying something deeply controversial and subtly subversive of the kind of Christianity we’re often sold in American culture… “Do you know where you’re going when you die? If you were to die today do you know for certain where you would spend eternity?” is their sales pitch and these questions seem to be the mantra of American evangelicalism. Although these questions are almost incoherent to the ears of emerging culture, they are still alive and well in Christianity today because the idea that Christianity is primarily about “where you are going”, about certainty thereof, and about what happens to you when you die, is still alive and well in Christianity today. The shadow of a doubt pertaining to the destination is seen as heresy and a lack of faith. But this is not the attitude of faith, this is the attitude of spiritual arrogance with a hint of ignorance.

In response to a question about destination, a question about entering God’s kingdom, Jesus said, “The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). There is a beautiful uncertainty about true faith and following Jesus. Christ called his disciples to follow him without revealing any sort of destination but only by promising a sort of becoming, by inviting them on a kind of journey, “Come follow me… I will make you fishers of men” (Mark 1:17). He called them to “ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden and through perils unknown” and spoke much more of the following itself than he ever did about any kind of destination, “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me” (Matthew 16:24). Never did he talk of being certain of the destination and yet that has become the center-piece of American Christianity, even to the point where Christians often overlook actually following Jesus and taking up their cross because they’ve come to see everything on Earth as secondary to their heavenly destination. For Christ, the world and the here and now were primary, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son” NOT “for God so loved heaven that made sure that people could know they were going there.”

God calls us to follow him because of what we might become NOT because of where we are headed. The destination may indeed be uncertain, the path may well be “untrodden,” but we go with faith because the way of the cross is ironically the best possible way to live. In this uncertain path we may find life that is truly life. In these “ventures of which we cannot see the ending” where we are called to see all we have and give it to the poor we will discover “in this present age homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions” (Mark 10:30). May we live in uncertainty so that when the path takes the unexpected turn toward the cross of Christ we will not abandon him for another destination but faithfully take up our cross and follow the crucified Jesus to become resurrected people.

As I prayed that prayer I felt indescribably free and I felt a sense of new life, empowered to live today in the uncertainty of tomorrow guiltless and with the hope of God’s leading love here with me now.

Let our faith not be defined by where we are going but let it be defined by the one who is taking us there, that our destination will not become our god but that the tortured and crucified Son of God would be the One God of our wandering hearts. May God lead us on paths of justice and mercy here, now, and always.

Wesley Ellis
from Living in the Kingdom

In our prayers for you we always thank God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, ⁴for we have heard of your faith in Christ Jesus and of the love that you have for all the saints, ⁵because of the hope laid up for you in heaven. You have heard of this hope before in the word of the truth, the gospel ⁶that has come to you. Just as it is bearing fruit and growing in the whole world, so it has been bearing fruit among yourselves from the day you heard it and truly comprehended the grace of God. ⁷This you learned from Epaphras, our beloved fellow-servant.^* He is a faithful minister of Christ on your^* behalf, ⁸and he has made known to us your love in the Spirit (Colossians 1:3-8)

After introducing himself as Paul, the apostle enters into a short thanksgiving/prayer emphasizing the hope of the present (”bearing fruit and growing in the world” 1:6) and not yet (”hope laid up for you in heaven” in 1:5) aspects of “the gospel.”  For a side-note on the Pauline term gospel, please see my article here.

In this introduction, there is a three-tiered structure of the familiar Christian motifs: faith, hope, and love.  The first two, faith and love, seem to form one seamless pair in Paul’s mind.  One must have faith in Christ and love for the saints.  The term “saints” here refers to “fellow-believers” (see F.F. Bruce, 41).  The two idea of faith and hope stem from the hope “laid up for them in heaven.”

Again, the future hope is rooted in the present “word of truth.”  Words must be spoken in a particular place, with a particular people, and into a particular context. This is extremely true here when the word of truth broke through into a particular context, and as it broke through (as a tree’s roots break through the ground) we see the gospel “bearing fruit” among them.

There are two things about fruit that we must understand (and perhaps agricultural workers in the Lycus Valley may have understood better than us).  First, trees take time to grow.  The roots that one takes in the “word of truth” may, at many times and in many places, be cut off or destroyed (a la the parable of the sower).  Second, trees need the faith and love spoken of in the triad above.  One might think of the analogy of trees needing both sun and water.  We need both our faith in Christ and the love for our fellow members in our community to see the gospel bear fruit in our communities.

Finally, what does it look like for the gospel to bear fruit?  Paul does not address this specifically, but I think it has a lot to do with what I talk about in my post on the Pauline conception of Gospel.  When we see the gospel in action it breaks down the walls between “us” and “them,” the “clean” and the “unclean,” or whatever blocks us out from others.  There is no line between “rich” and “poor” (in fact, it might be good for us to stop thinking in terms of serving the poor, as Claudio Oliver has done).

These dropping of lines can seem dangerous and even heretical at times.  What would the church look like without lines?  What would the church look like without the usual boundaries of the four walls?  What would the church look like if it truly loved?

Resources for Studying Colossians
1. Colossians Remixed: Subverting the Empire:
2. Colossians (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries): by N.T. Wright

“Paul, a servant^* of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, set apart for the gospel of God, ²which he promised beforehand through his prophets in the holy scriptures, ³the gospel concerning his Son, who was descended from David according to the flesh ⁴and was declared to be Son of God with power according to the spirit^* of holiness by resurrection from the dead, Jesus Christ our Lord, ⁵through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, ⁶including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ…” (Romans 1:1-6)

First, the gospel is a story of “descension” and “ascension.”  Jesus “descended” from the line of David making him an undoubtedly human (flesh-and-bone) person also declared to be the “Son of God” after his ascension from death (and later his ascension to heaven).  The paradox that Jesus both descended and ascended is one that is not easily understood.

He has descended in the sense that he has taken on humanity.  He has “emptied himself” (Philippians 2:7) to become a very real and very fleshly human being.  He has ascended in the above passage when, paradoxically, he is also “declared to be the son of God with power according to the spirit of Holiness.”  The gospel is about living out this paradox.  We are to live as Christ lived in the flesh to be a kind of true flesh to those around us, as Christ is the true flesh, and yet we are to live a life empowered by the spirit “from above.”

The paradox might best be understood in the sense that the Spirit’s power “from above” plays out in the world of flesh and bone.  They are not separate “worlds,” rather, then interact constantly with one another in paradoxical fashion.

The gospel then is the message that this human being, in his flesh and blood, as comes with power from on high to show us the power of resurrection.  As Christ rose from the dead, so we too will rise (and, paradoxically, have already rose) and live as Christ truly lives.

The taking of that message in the technical Pauline sense is to the gentiles (as noted above) “…bring about the obedience of faith to all the gentiles.”  In this sense, the message of the gospel is also about the breaking down of the walls between the Jew and the Gentile “for the sake of his name.”  Christ’s gospel is meant to break down the barriers and dividing walls between the classical Jewish understanding of “clean” and “unclean.”  There is no longer any wall.

And in that tradition, followers of Christ are called to follow Paul’s examples of breaking down barriers.  We are to take this message of Christ to all the world.  This is by no means an exhaustive study, but will help us to understand the nature of the gospel when Paul speaks of it in the book of Colossians.

The Song of the day comes from a lesser known hip-hop artist Noodle the Innocent Child with his song Celebrate Life. You can hear more of his music here and here.  I am interested to hear more of his music when it comes out. 

Swearing an Oath
I know Jesus said let your yes be yes and your no be no, but if all those executives responsible for the latest recession had pledged something similar to the link above we may not have had such a recession.

No Room at the Inn (for Palestinians)
This story is one of many that I hear coming off the wire. And we wonder why Israel is so unpopular in the Middle East.

The Death of Progress
This post expertly questions whether progress is really progressive. We need to think long and hard about the idea of “growing” our organizations and more about the nature of the organizations we run.

First, Driscoll says this about the “calling” or “courting” system of the last century:

The major downside of calling [courting during the 19th century] was the expense, which made it impossible for many people in the middle and lower classes. They simply could not afford a sitting room or parlor designated for calling, complete with a piano, along with formal attire to wear and specific food to eat (p. 181).

Driscoll then talks about how the world has “changed” so much saying:

This [the car] altered the nature of male-female pursuit so that the best men were those with the most money (symbolized by which kind of car they drove) and therefore the most able to afford the nicest dates, and the most prized women were the most outwardly beautiful and sexual who could serve as the best trophy (p. 182).

I don’t know if I’m the only one who noticed this glaring inconsistency in Driscoll’s writing.  I could understand how this might be missed in one of his fast-paced sermons (the man is a smooth-talker and he does it a million miles a minute with no notes), but in print it seems that in the courting age, those with money were given preference in the courting system, and in the automobile age those with money to buy automobiles were given prefence.  The story seems to be exactly the same: preferential treatment for the rich in our dating social systems.  Those without cars or those without money in the previous system are left out of the accepted dating or courting norms of their culture.

Driscoll – read your own words – nothing has changed.

He then talks about how cohabitation is now a huge problem in the United States jumping from 1 million cohabitators in 1978 to 5 million in 2008.  He uses this evidence to say that now the   “expectation is that they will cohabit prior to marriage.”  Let’s ACTUALLY look at the statistics: taking into account population inflation that means the percent of cohabitators in the United States has changed from 0.8% of the population to 3.3% in the last 40 YEARS.  In other words, less than 4% of the population cohabits before marriage.  This surely does not lend itself to the idea that people are “expected” to cohabitat before marriage.  The statistics, in fact, still say exactly the opposite.

He does make the point that a quarter of women 25-39 cohabitat before marriage, but this STILL means that the majority (75%) do NOT cohabitat before marriage.  Which STILL does not establish an “expectation.”

Using his expectations, he then makes the case that:

“Virtually all research on the topic has determined that the chances of divorce ending a marriage that was preceded by cohabitation are significantly greater than for a marriage that was not preceded by cohabitation.”

Again, he seems to ignore the same statistics that young [often sex-crazed Christians] couples in their early twenties [who can't wait any longer or are 'burning with passion'] are also more likely to divorced than those who get married later.

What am I trying to say?  Basically, I am asking that those like Driscoll would stop using statistics to “prove” his points.  Statistics are complicated and the general public is often duped into believing all sorts of false things based on the idea that the “statistics” prove the point.

What else am I trying to say?  Basically, that Driscoll and others should address some of the root points of our societies obsession with sexual relationships.  He bemoans the move away from the “calling” system (which, he admits, was bent towards the conveniences and the excesses of the rich with their parlors and free time).  What can Driscoll say to what we might call “the working poor” with kids who can’t have that kind of supervision because both parents work full-time?

The same issues that Driscoll talks about as “modern” are rife in the literature of former arenas.  Just read Thomas Hardy or Jane Austen to find that many of these same social problems were alive and well back then in Driscoll’s ‘good old days.’  What issues am I talking about?

Here are some deep-issues that need to be addressed which are not at all addressed in Driscoll’s work:

1. Automobiles: Driscoll has done a good job of noting one of the root problems that has hampered our family life in the last century, but he doesn’t flesh the point out.  Why do adolscents in our culture feel the need to have a car (sometimes taking on a level of debt that takes them years to pay back)?  Why do adolescents feel the need to buy new cars every few years?  I know of people who are 23 and have already owned four cars in since age 18.
2. Family:  How do we reunite the family in a way that they are involved in the dating system in a way that does not show prefential treatment to the rich?  How do we make sure that the ‘working poor’ are involved in the conversation?  How to we restore proper family relationships?

There are other issues here too, but I feel that Driscoll has spent too much time in his second “misconception” that he has misguided his audience into thinking there is some “problem” without ever addressing the root causes.

Halloween: Yes or No?
One person argues that the Puritanical fear of the occult and the general evangelical hatred towards the Roman Catholic Church is what originally created the fear of Halloween. Perhaps, he argues, we have come to believe our own propaganda?

A Theology of the Land
tallskinnykiwi talks about and quotes Christian farmers who are doing what they can to bring justice and equality to what Paul called “the whole created order.”

Pray for Glenn Beck
He surely needs it.

New Smashing Pumpkins album to be Free
If you love Smashing Pumpkins, you’d better read this.

The Jesus we Never Knew
:

In later clarifying the second mistake (don’t do announcements at the beginning), Easum says:

…announcements at the beginning of a worship service so deadly- because they violate every media tenet as well slap as our culture in the face.  Most younger people today do whatever they can to avoid watching a commercial on TV. Imagine what a media savvy twenty-something feels when subjected to five or ten minutes of commercials up front before they have the chance to decide if they like what’s happening in your worship.

And if you say, “That’s tough. We don’t bow to the culture,” you’re missing the point. The way to be counter-cultural is not by intentionally turning people away with your methodology. The way to be counter-cultural is to make the worship so appealing that the Holy Spirit has time to speak into their lives and transform their hearts into followers of Christ. You can’t do that if you run them off at the beginning of the service.

I don’t know Easum personally.  He seems to have reasonably valid credentials for talking about church growth and church marketing, but I wonder if we have lost something in this message of making the Holy Spirit “appealing.”

There is nothing all that “appealing” to me about Jesus.  He didn’t hold nice services and invite lots of people to hear him.  In fact, he tried very often to turn people away or keep what he did a secret.  What do we do with this Jesus in light of modern church marketing?

I’m not sure I have the answers, but I would appreciate any thoughts on the matter.

Not long ago, I heard a story of a Vietnamese leader of a city.  His son was getting married and he wanted to throw a huge party for him.  He owned a huge brewery, and gave his hired hands the day off to hand out invitations to all his friends and family.

The servants passed out over a thousand invitations, but the majority of them called and said they couldn’t make it.  One of his servants was even mistreated by the people he invited.  They began to beat him with a baseball bat.

The leader was so angry at the shame brought on his family that he called up one of the ruling military junta.  He showed the junta the list of guests he had invited to the party and said he would provide $100 for each head brought to him dead.  The city was in an uproar as the junta descended upon the city.

All of the thousand people on the list were found and brought out to the public square.  Their families were forced to watch with their eyes open as the military shot them through the head and burned down their houses.  All of them were found and the military junta made $100,000 in fees from the rich leader.

“I will show them how it feels to be rejected and truly shamed,” the leader replied after he had given the junta their pay.  “I will bring in the disgraced and the downtrodden.  They will come to my son’s wedding and then all those who should have come, but didn’t, will be left outside in the cold.”

And it was so.

The servants brought the homeless, the destitute, and the sick to his son’s wedding.  One woman was angered to see that the leader of the city had brought a convicted rapist into the party and a convicted drug dealer.  He opened up the jails and let the worst criminals, the ones who had raped and sexually abused children, sit in the front row.  This was the way of the leader of the city.  They had all been given the best clothes to wear, no matter what they had done.

Suddenly, however, he noticed that one man was still dressed in filthy clothes.

“What are you doing here?” the leader of the city asked.

The man said nothing.

“You dare to come into my son’s wedding without proper attire?  Get OUT!”

And at that the servants grabbed him and through him out into the cold.

This is like the kingdom of heaven.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.